The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for control of fluids on work area floors. More specifically, the invention relates to methods and disposable apparatus for keeping the footgear and the feet of workers out of fluids that fall to the floor in a work area. In particular, the present invention provides a macro-porous surface upon which workers may stand and through which fluids may easily pass to be collected in a fluid collection vessel underlying the porous material.
A problem affecting the health and safety of a variety of workers is that of providing a safe, non-slippery, dry area upon which the workers can stand. Hospital operating room personnel are routinely required to stand and work in conditions in which the floor is inundated with several liters of blood, bodily fluids, and saline solution during a single procedure. Drilling, sawing, and other metalworking operations may wet floors with lubricants, coolants, or other liquids and make the nearby floors difficult, unpleasant, or dangerous places to work. Many die casters, chemists, machinists, maintenance workers, and workers in other occupations encounter floor surfaces that are wetted either frequently or periodically any of a substantial variety of release agents, aqueous solutions, cleaning formulations, reagents, waste, spillage, and the like.
Various types of grating structures that support workers above locations where, liquid or fluid, accumulates, or collects, may be fitted on flooring that is routinely wet. Even if puddles do not develop on a work surface floor, a small amount of liquid is frequently enough to make a floor slippery. Floor drains may be required to keep some floors free of puddles. Some other situations, can be improved easily by applying anti-skid materials to the floor. In other instances, a roughened finish may be applied to cast-in-place floor surfaces such as concrete. In some work environments, those remedies may be impractical.
For example, the appearance of some flooring materials can be permanently damaged by spills of materials such as paints, rust, water, or solvents that may be transported or used nearby. A plumber may be required to repair or replace appliances and component lines at locations where expensive carpets are installed. Trays, towels, pans, and drop cloths are often used to protect existing floor covering material on an ad hoc basis, often with a less than desirable outcome because the activity may occur seldom, if ever, at any particular location. Many tradespeople do not routinely provide satisfactory mats or other equipment to catch spills and prevent damage to floors during routine maintenance or in response to needed repairs. Some liquid materials that fall to the floor cannot be safely drained through ordinary floor drains because the materials are chemicals that pose environmental hazards. Other materials that fall to the floor in certain work places can present bio-hazards.
Even in facilities where the floors are routinely wetted, specific conditions can make the use of gratings difficult or impossible. In food handling operations, it may be impossible to clean grating-covered floors with sufficient thoroughness to prevent potential contamination of the product. Likewise, it may be impossible to clean grating surfaces sufficiently frequently and with sufficient thoroughness to prevent contamination and infection of other people, especially those who must work in damp conditions such as those found in hospital operating theaters. It may be necessary to recover the potentially harmful spillage and waste from such workplaces for subsequent treatment, recovery, measurement, incineration, re-processing, or disposal in accordance with applicable laws, policies, and regulations.
Persons skilled in the art of operating room design and in hospital sanitation have long sought ways to reduce the problems caused by the liquid materials that inundate floors in operating rooms and emergency rooms. Although several attempts at creating improved work areas have been made, none has produced a system that is both practical to use and practical to sterilize.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,635,913, issued Jan. 13, 1987; U.S. Pat. No. 4,718,653, issued Jan. 12, 1988; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,811,937, issued Mar. 14, 1989, Rothman disclosed a series of Portable Surgical Drainage Platforms. The inventions he developed could assist surgeons and other surgical staff by supporting the personnel on grating and removing liquid that falls through the grating. The platforms are, however, rather heavy and are also difficult to sterilize at all, especially in the short amount of time that may available between surgeries.
LaRooka received U.S. Pat. No. 4,243,214 on Jan. 6, 1981, for her Irrigation-Debridement-Repair Caddy. That disclosure is directed to an apparatus that can be placed under an extremity of a person during a surgical procedure. The Irrigation-Debridement-Repair Caddy is designed to collect some of the irrigation saline solution and excised tissue that would otherwise drip onto the floor and collect the fluid in a closeable bottle for eventual disposal.
Other workers, such as Gibbs in his U.S. Pat. No. 2,851,311, issued Apr. 22, 1955, have developed a variety of ingenious portable scaffolding and grate-retaining devices.
Presently known methods and apparatus have been unable to implement a solution to the various problems encountered by people who work in areas where wet floors are routinely encountered. In hospital operating rooms, for example, the method for controlling wet floor problems is often merely to scatter disposable absorbent blankets, pads, or mats on the floor. Following the surgery, the absorbent material may be weighed to measure the amount of fluid lost by the patient during the procedure. Typical absorbent blankets are made of materials similar to those used to make disposable diapers. It may readily be appreciated that standing, walking, and working with several pieces of that type of material disintegrating on the floor surface is difficult, at best. Unfortunately, those activities are especially difficult under actual conditions because the considerable activity during a surgical procedure tends to bunch up the absorbent materials. Under these circumstances, the potential for tripping or other accidents is further aggravated because the concentration of workers is directed to matters other than the status of the floors on which they stand.
What is needed, then is a disposable fluid control island for selectably collecting, retaining and draining fluids from the vicinity of the feet of workers comprising a generally broad, shallow, impermeable vessel having a generally horizontal, floor-contacting, bottom portion and a generally vertical peripheral portion, a foot-supporting portion disposed within and substantially filling the vessel, the foot-supporting portion having a top surface spaced apart from the vessel bottom portion by filler comprised of; a vertical compression resisting portion having sufficient resistance to compression to support workers standing on the foot-supporting portion, and a liquid retaining portion comprised of fluid-absorbing material, a link formed at the periphery of the vessel for retaining in proximity to one another an assembly comprised of at least one vessel and at least one other component from the group of components consisting of vessels and inclined transitions, the inclined transitions being positionable at the periphery of a vessel assembly and extending between the floor and the top surface of the foot-supporting portion, and means for closing the apparatus for retaining collected fluids until final disposition of the fluid collecting island is effected.
Embodiments of the present disclosure meet these needs, and more, by solving the long-recognized problem of containing and removing fluids from floors in the vicinity of workers. The present disclosure teaches a disposable, fluid containing and draining vessel filled with porous material having substantial void space that supports workers. In a preferred embodiment, the porous supporting material is a stiff, hydrophobic, non-woven, polymer fiber mat that has substantial void space. Many other configurations for the supporting material may be used without departing from the scope of this disclosure, including, without limitation, materials such as coarsely woven rope mats, nibs or bristles that extend vertically from the bottom of the vessel, and any of the number of materials and techniques by which door mats can be made.
The support material preferred, however, is lightweight so that the fluid control island may be shipped, stored, and handled easily by personnel who have no special training, physical abilities or handling equipment. It is also preferred that the support material be inexpensive so that the fluid control island can be disposed of destructively to reduce the potential for environmental and health hazards that might result from attempts to clean and re-use the components. It is also preferred that the support material have good shelf life. Other desirable support material characteristics include: that it is non-slippery when wet, that it remains flat on the floor surface while the fluid control island is in use, that liquids may be readily removed from the support material for recovery or analysis, that it be easily bonded to the vessel material, that it does not cause allergic reactions, that it does not create difficult disposal problems, and that it can be folded or rolled for easy shipping.
The support material is contained within a shallow vessel that prevents fluids that fall onto the support material from contacting the floor. The vessel may be formed in many different configurations, however, it may be most useful when it covers a fairly large area. For example, a fluid control island vessel may be 2xc2xdxe2x80x2 wide, 4xe2x80x2 long, have a depth and mesh thickness of xc2xexe2x80x3 with a drainage slope of xe2x85x9xe2x80x3 over the length and/or the width. The slope causes the liquid to flow toward one end of the vessel making it possible to remove the fluid easily either with a vacuum source and fluid collection canister or with use of a pump capable of pumping the specific liquids that a particular vessel collects. Such a fluid control island vessel, with the support mat in place, can contain several liters of fluids. That surge capacity makes it possible to use a relatively low rate of fluid removal with an inexpensive removal system, whether vacuum operated or pumped directly, yet still have sufficient capacity to collect and remove all the fluids collected in the vessel during a procedure.
The disposable fluid control island may be furnished with transition members that make the change in elevation from the fluid control island to the floor gradual. It can be seen that the transition from the surrounding floor to the fluid controls island support surface is approximately 1xc2xcxe2x80x3 which will be easily tolerated by personnel if a transition zone of approximately 6xe2x80x3 is provided. It is also to be understood that areas or rooms where the disposable fluid control island is used frequently may be fitted with floor indentations sized to receive the disposable fluid control island vessel with minimal difference in the elevation of the support surface and the surrounding floor.
The support surface-containing vessel may advantageously be fitted into other equipment or structures, whether portable, temporary, fixed, or permanent. For example, a temporary or mobile testing laboratory may benefit from having an area adapted for receiving the support surface-containing vessel. A specialized work area such as a portable surgical set-up for knee-replacement surgery may have fixtures, instruments, tools, supplies and other needed items both available and located at the most appropriate locations to enable surgical personnel to carry out a particular procedure or a particular class of procedures with the utmost speed and efficiency. It would be necessary to transport such a set-up between operating rooms and to move it to and from storage to accommodate a different standardized set-up, such as one for hip replacement surgery or for cardiac by-pass surgery.
The time saving and productivity enhancement potential that may be gained by utilization of such procedures and equipment have not been readily realizable absent the apparatus and methods of the present disclosure. The difficulty of properly cleaning and sterilizing such platforms and the associated gratings and support members between procedures is responsible, at least in part, for the reluctance of decision makers to adopt such systems and set-ups. By fitting the present support surface-containing vessel to such a portable surgical station, it is possible to verify the amount of liquids used and released and to easily dispose of the bio-hazard presenting tissues and fluids by incineration or other approved techniques.
When the area to be protected or the area in which the work will be performed, or carried out, is larger than the size of a single fluid control island member, it is desirable to fit vessel/support material modules together to cover the needed floor area by making a disposable fluid control island of any desired size. The modules may be sized so that interconnection is easy and versatile. Mating edge connections may be provided on the modules so that adjacent modules may be readily linked together. It is also possible to form all edges of the modules identically and then to add a separate connection channel or adaptor. It may also be satisfactory in some instances to use adhesives or adhesive tapes to connect modules. In some applications, linking or connecting adjacent modules may not be necessary. It may be possible to hold the modules in the correct position with relocatable, high tack adhesive tape or pre-applied relocatable high tack adhesives that will prevent the disposable fluid control island modules from shifting after being placed at the desired location on the floor.
One method for preventing wet floors in work areas and for supporting the feet of workers above liquid that falls or otherwise comes into contact with the floor (including the vessel and support material) in an area in which workers work can be comprised of the steps of placing a generally broad, shallow, impermeable vessel having a generally horizontal, floor-contacting, bottom portion and a generally vertical peripheral portion on the floor of the work area, placing a foot-supporting portion that has a bottom surface and a fluid-permeable top surface spaced apart from the bottom surface by filler in the vessel, retaining fluid that falls in the vicinity of the feet of the workers in the vessel, and supporting the feet of workers above liquid that accumulates in the vessel. Additional steps of this method may also include draining the collected liquid from the vessel automatically using a pump. The fluid collection performance may be enhanced by placing an inclined transition portion between the floor and the vessel. This method may readily carried out using the structure disclosed here.
Fluids that reach the fluid control island disclosed herein will normally be caused to flow toward a collection point by sloping the bottom of the vessel. When more than one module is used at a time, it is possible to connect each module drain to a manifold so that a single collection, fluid transport, and receiving container can be used during each procedure. The manifold can be made of the same tubular material that forms hydraulic connections with a multiplicity of fluid-conducting drain tubes or conduits. When the procedure is one that may result in the apparatus intercepting more fluid than a single container holds, additional receiving containers may be connected serially. The vessel side walls may be provided with knock-out plugs or other selectable fluid transmitting devices such as valves, stoppers, cut-outs, or other bulkhead feed-through elements so that the fluids may flow or be drawn into tubing and pumped or vacuum transported from the vessel and ultimately to an appropriate disposal process. It may be desirable to form a series of generally parallel channels that are oriented toward the location of the drain to reduce the amount of fluid retained by the vessel and support surface when the procedure is concluded and it is desired to remove the disposable fluid control island and to then dispose of it.